Every Soul a Star

As the day of the eclipse approaches, the campsite becomes hectic. Despite their parents’ concerns, Team Exo—all but Bree, who is busy unpacking—plans to gather in the evening on a hillside where the tracking equipment is set up to gather data for the international astronomical project. Ally, who has been preparing for this once-in-a-lifetime eclipse, worries over weather—a cloudy day would ruin the chance to witness the eclipse. Indeed, this night, the rain pours, and the team must work together to move all the computer equipment into a nearby shed. When a heavy storm erupts, the kids decide they will stay and camp together in the shed. They pool all the snacks and drinks they brought, tell ghost stories, and even invent a game using objects in the shed. At the height of the storm, Bree arrives—she did not like being in her cabin alone.

As the storm continues, the kids open up to each other. Ally, suddenly in tears, admits she does not want to leave the life she knows. Bree confesses she still cannot see herself living at Moon Shadow. Ryan, a bit older, counsels them both to accept things and make the best of them. In a moment of honesty, he admits his grandparents are divorcing and that he is having trouble adjusting to the new family dynamic. Ryan suggests they all help each other.

Bree goes first and gives Ally advice on handling school, other kids, teachers, and the reality of cliques. Bree tell Ally that she does not actually have to be anything—Ally just needs to create a persona, pretending to be someone she may or may not be to fit in: “As the new kid, they’ll try to put you in a category right away. Your job is to make sure it’s the one you want” (228). Ally assures Bree of the benefits of living in the camp, of not being around people who judge everything, of living without the distractions of television and cell phones, and of feeling close to nature. Even as the rain stops, the kids remain in the shed. Jack awkwardly opens up about his ludic dreaming episodes and how free he feels when he flies in his dreams. When the skies finally clear, Ally gives Bree a chance to look into a telescope. Reluctantly, Bree peers up into the night sky. She is blown away: “It’s so beautiful and mysterious and powerful” (234). She has released her “inner geek.”

The next morning after breakfast, Jack heads to the Art House. He resisted adding anything to the walls, fearing his aliens and mutants would be out of place. Now, in a fever of inspired creativity, he paints what he considers the best thing he has ever done. It is a stunning mural depicting each of the members of Team Exo. After jogging with Ryan, Jack returns to his cabin, exhausted. Hours later, Ally wakes him up for another night of data gathering. In a moment of unguarded honesty, Jack confesses to Ally that when he was a baby, he appeared in a national advertising campaign for Pampers full-size diapers. Despite the money it has brought in, the commercials have long been a source of embarrassment for him. Far from laughing at him, Ally is impressed: “So you’re kind of famous” (245).

At the experiment site, Kenny, the youngest of Team Exo, takes charge of setting up the computers outside and repositioning the telescopes. Each member works a station, each committed to making the team work. The work is exacting and demands patience. As the kids monitor the stations, they each in turn realize how vast the night sky is and how everything in the cosmos is moving—even the Earth, which seems so steady and anchored.

Suddenly, the computer readout registers a star’s light curve momentarily growing fainter and then returning, a bell curve that possibly indicates the passing of a planet. The team is ecstatic. Amid all the cheers, however, Jack realizes that when the eclipse ends the next afternoon, he will have to return to his old life as if Moon Shadow and Team Exo never happened. He decides he will not watch the eclipse so that in his mind it will never happen.

On the morning of the eclipse, Ally’s family is boxing up their belongings for the move as she bustles about the camp, now crowded with eclipse chasers. Ryan brings the news that a team of astronomers in Hawaii confirmed their data. Team Exo actually discovered a planet, and they are the youngest astronomers ever to do that. As eclipse time approaches, thousands with cameras and filtered telescopes gather in the camp’s open fields. All the kids are there except Jack. The eclipse begins, and the sun moves toward totality, the passage of the moon casting the vast open field crowded with spectators in a kind of mystical half-light shadow. At the moment of totality, the spectators drop their protective glasses to see the sun engulfed by the moon, “pulsing, looping, swirling, glowing, a halo of unearthly light” (278). At that moment, Ally feels someone take her hand—it is Jack. He has decided to join the other kids. Together they watch the mesmerizing sky show. Far from the protective sanctuary of his treehouse, Jack knows he will never forget Moon Shadow and that his life will be all right.

Before the eclipse begins, Bree ventures into the Labyrinth. She believes that now she is ready to enter the mysterious site. Walking through the great circle of rocks, she has an epiphany: the “universe really is full of mysterious and amazing things” (282). She sees that the right make-up and designer fashions and making sure her lip gloss matches her purse really do not matter. Before she heads out to the field, she receives a lengthy fax from Claire inviting her to spend the summer in the city and attend a local modeling class. Bree finds herself surprisingly uninterested. During the eclipse, however, she is deeply moved, and her heart beats faster. As the sun disappears behind the moon, Bree is even a bit scared: “I feel its loss in the pit of my stomach” (296). As the sun slowly returns, Bree admits that she has at last seen real beauty and that if it were possible, she would make that moment last forever.